Governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in remote areas of national forests under a Bush administration proposal to boost logging.
Environmentalists say the proposed rule change, outlined this week in the Federal Register, would signal the end of the so-called roadless rule, which blocks road construction in nearly one-third of national forests as a way to prevent logging and other commercial activity in backcountry woods.
The roadless rule affects about 45,000 acres in New Hampshire, which has the 780,000-acre White Mountain National Forest. About 50 percent of the forest does not have any roads, and more than 114,000 acres are federally protected as wilderness.
Jan Pendlebury of the NH-National Environmental Trust, said yesterday the Bush proposal is simply "gutting the rule" to accommodate the President's friends in the timber and oil industries. She said the public ends up subsidizing the roads because the cost of cutting the road does not cover the amount paid for the timber, at least not in the White Mountains.
She said the roadless rule, which the Clinton administration adopted during its final days in office in January 2001, was the "most public process," with more than 8,000 state residents and groups commenting and 93 percent in support of it.
Without a national policy against road construction, forest management would revert back to individual forest plans that in many cases allow roads and other development on most of the 58 million acres now protected by the roadless rule, environmentalists say.
"Basically I think this proposal takes away protections on a national level" against road-building and logging, Robert Vandermark, co-director of the Heritage Forest Campaign, said yesterday.
He and other environmentalists said it is unlikely that governors in pro-logging states would seek to keep the roadless rule in effect.
"I can't imagine the governors of Montana or Wyoming or Colorado moving ahead with this thing and saying we want to petition to get in" to protect roadless areas, said Michael Francis, national forest director for The Wilderness Society.
White Mountain National Forest Supervisor Tom Wagner has said there are no major road projects on the horizon in New Hampshire. A new forest plan is about to be released, the first since 1986, but little change is expected in the areas where logging is to be permitted.
Mike Cline, a forest ecologist who once worked for the International Paper Company, said roads built in "our forests are essentially forever and the only reason for them is for extractive use" by the timber industry in New Hampshire. Large, uncut tracts of land are what many endangered species and birds need, he said.
"That's our bank account for so many of these animals," he said
Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch stressed that the proposal is preliminary, but called it an accurate statement of the administration's intentions.
Officials had said last year they would develop a plan to allow governors to seek exemptions from the roadless rule. The latest plan turns that on its head by making governors petition the Agriculture Department if they want to maintain restrictions on timbering in their state.
"The roadless rule is struck down nationwide," Valetkevitch said, referring to a 2003 ruling by a federal judge in Wyoming. "We are trying to create a rule that will pass legal muster."
The three-year-old rule has twice been struck down by federal judges, most recently in a Wyoming case decided in July 2003. That case, which environmentalists have appealed, is one of several pending legal challenges, complicating efforts to issue a new plan.
Republican lawmakers have criticized the roadless rule as overly intrusive and even dangerous, saying it has left millions of acres exposed to catastrophic wildfire.
Valetkevitch disputed a claim by environmentalists that requiring governors to petition for changes means the demise of the roadless rule.
"They could do a number of things - make adjustments to it, add acres or change the boundaries," she said, noting that some areas now counted as roadless actually have roads in them, although many are impassable.
The Federal Register notice calls for public comment to begin later this month and continue into September.
